Empire, Oracle, and an Attack on Russia, China, and America

In the sixth century BC, the Lydian emperor Croesus faced a dilemma of entering a war with Persia, a formidable opponent rising in power. Prior to making a decision about war, Croesus decided to consult the Oracle of Delphi. The answer he received was simple. If he attacks the Persians a great empire will be destroyed. Armed with this information, Croesus attacked the Persians and lost, thereby destroying his own empire and changing the fate of his own people.

Fast forward to the 21st century and another emperor’s dilemma. Even casual observers of the global geopolitical reality are amazed with how rapid is the rate of deterioration in relationship between the United States and Russia. In the Pacific realm, the American exchange with China is equally worrying.

Considering complete disregard for traditional diplomatic decorum and continuous threats to anyone and everywhere, one must conclude that the current American foreign policy imperative is to initiate a full-scale war in Eurasia. No other reasonable explanation fits the framework of why deterioration in relationship with two nuclear powers is occurring at such a rapid rate and in particularly tasteless fashion.

Matters of Scale

What is it that war against Russia and China will bring to the United States, i.e., what is its purpose? Nuclear war is out of the question in terms of having a habitable planet afterwards. This leaves an option of a serious conventional war in which neither side can prevail in fully defeating its opponent and occupying his country. Current adversaries do not even share a land border between each other. The Chinese will not invade Wyoming and the Americans will not be sending their airborne troops to the Gobi desert.

In Europe, the current Russian military doctrine is clear—if attacked, do not fight on our own soil and make sure to fight on the attacker’s land. This still does not mean that the Russians or their allies will be landing in Montana. Today’s reality is different from Hollywood’s traditional depiction of a red menace. Russia’s military capacity and absence of will to fight purposeless large-scale conventional wars farther from its borders do not allow such scenario. It would be very difficult to come up with historical examples of Russian, Soviet, or Tsarist-era colonialism and military intervention into countries outside its immediate neighborhood. Conflict in Syria is too small a scale to be compared with a forthcoming conflict with the American military might (and its militarily-diminutive NATO partners).

Culture Change

World War III’s purpose is to have a conflict and utilize it domestically. Often overlooked is that wartime is the most efficient moment in implementing radical changes to an existing system. No other method has proven as fast and efficient in allowing a complete modification of an existing social, economic, and political system than war. If we take a look at the events prior, during, and after the previous two World Wars, we can see how radical the changes were domestically and to the entire world. The next global conflict will produce equally as drastic changes.

Creation of the Federal Reserve System, for example, and the adoption of the 16th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all occurred in a short period of time prior to the American participation in the First World War. These are just some of the cultural changes that have affected Americans of that era. Consider watching an interview (below) with Mr. Norman Dodd. He worked as a Congressional investigator for the Special Committee on Tax Exempt Foundations in 1953, and his finding about the activities of the major tax exempt foundations towards pushing for war and changing American way of life prior and during the First World War.

Figure 1. Interview with Norman Dodd. Passages from the transcript of this interview pertaining to the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace are in the Appendix.

The Second World War also produced many outcomes that have directly impacted lives of all Americans. Creation of an American Empire has ushered in an age of interventionism that still continues. Along the way, the U.S. dollar was established as the global reserve currency, allowing the American Government to print as many as it wanted and for the Americans to disproportionately benefit from this system compared to the rest of the world.

Decades-long unwise manipulation of beneficial status is gradually bringing to end sustainability of the current system. Russian and Chinese challenge to the unipolar world and American monopolistic dominance is a response to the current system that is rotting from inside. This is why those in charge of the United States need a war; not to preserve the dollar as a single reserve currency, which they cannot, but to revamp the existing American cultural system.

Anyone thinking that the collapse of the dollar is not going to affect every aspect of the American culture has not been paying attention. Those who believe that the collapse of the dollar can be done in peace time without major domestic problems are rather naïve. War is simply a necessary means of pacifying the domestic population into accepting changes that otherwise would trigger Americans to take pitchforks to the U.S. Congress and the White House.

“Devaluation of the meaning of the term war has been so drastic that even the warnings about a devastating global conflict are taken lightly. The seriousness of a geopolitical standoff in Eurasia, with indicators pointing in the direction of a possible real war—for those who bother to pay attention—is downgraded into the casual attachment of the adjective “cold” to the “next” war. Its purpose is to calm the public into the comforting belief that the next Cold War will be similar to the previous one; i.e., global business continues as usual without a direct military confrontation between the superpowers. The adjective “Cold” is a form of mental valium. It tends to minimize potential anxiousness about real conflict.”

Implications

The American public, traditionally disinterested in foreign affairs, has grown accustomed to continuous bombastic barking and threats from Washington D.C. to adversaries (and to allies, too) around the world. The populace expects a cold war, but not a military confrontation on a much greater scale that will be used as a medium in fundamentally changing the American way of life.

In time of conflict, cultural change nearly always results in the state’s increase in power. State makes sure to implement policies that restrict and reduce the rights of individuals whenever and wherever possible. Individual economic, political, and social freedoms are a barrier for the state’s expansion of power, hence turbulent conditions allow passages of measures that would otherwise have been flatly rejected and strongly contested under normal conditions. It will be a deeply sobering and unpleasant social, economic, and political experience for the Americans when the international war and subsequent domestic policies fully arrive and alter their lives.

Griffin: There is quite a bit of publicity given to your conversation with Rowan Gaither. Will you please tell us who he was, and what was that conversation you had with him?

Dodd: Rowan Gaither was, at that time, President of the Ford Foundation. Mr. Gaither had sent for me, when I found it convenient to be in New York. He asked me to call upon him at his office, which I did.

Upon arrival, after a few amenities, Mr. Gaither said, “Mr. Dodd, we have asked you to come up here today, because we thought that, possibly, off the record, you would tell us why the Congress is interested in the activities of foundations such as ourselves.”

And, before I could think of how I would reply to that statement, Mr. Gaither then went on, and voluntarily stated, “Mr. Dodd, all of us who have a hand in the making of policies here, have had experience either with the OSS during the war, or with European economic administration after the war. We have had experience operating under directives. The directives emanate, and did emanate, from the White House. Now, we still operate under just such directives. Would you like to know what the substance of these directives is?”

I said, “Yes, Mr. Gaither, I would like very much to know.” Whereupon, he made this statement to me, “Mr. Dodd, we are here to operate in response to similar directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant-making power so to alter life in the United States, that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.”

Well, parenthetically, Mr. Griffin, I nearly fell off the chair. I, of course, didn’t, but my response to Mr. Gaither then was, “Oh, Mr. Gaither, I can now answer your first question. You’ve forced the Congress of the United States to spend a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to find our what you have just told me.” I said, “Of course, legally, you’re entitled to make grants for this purpose. But, I don’t think you’re entitled to withhold that information from the People of this country, to whom you’re indebted for your tax exemption. So why don’t you tell the People of the country just what you told me?” And his answer was, “We would not think of doing any such thing.” So, then I said, “Well, Mr. Gaither, obviously, you forced the Congress to spend this money, in order to find out what you just told me.”

Griffin: Mr. Dodd, you have spoken, before, about some interesting things that were discovered by Kathryn Casey at the Carnegie Endowment. Would you tell us that story, please?

Dodd: Sure, glad to, Mr. Griffin. This experience you just referred to, came about in response to a letter which I had written to the Carnegie Endowment Center, National Peace, asking certain questions and gathering certain information.

On the arrival of that letter, Dr. Johnson, who was then President of the Carnegie Endowment, telephoned me and said, “Did you ever come up to New York?” I said, “Yes, I did, more or less each weekend.” And he said, “When you are next here, will you drop in and see us?” Which I did.

And again, on arrival, at the office of the Endowment, I found myself in the presence of Dr. Joseph Johnson, the President, who was the successor to Alger Hiss, two vice-presidents and their own counsel, a partner in the firm — a fellow by the name of Cromwell. And Dr. Johnson said (again after amenities), “Mr. Dodd, we have your letter. We can answer all those questions, but it would be a great deal of trouble. We have a counter-suggestion. Our counter-suggestion is that, if you can spare a member of your staff for two weeks, and send that member up to New York, we will give to that member a room in the library, and the minute books of this Foundation since its inception. And we think that, whatever you want to find out or that the Congress wants to find out, will be obvious from those minutes.”

Well, my first reaction was they had lost their minds. I had a pretty good idea of what those minutes would contain, but I realized that Dr. Johnson had only been in office two years, and the vice-presidents were relatively young men, and counsel also seemed to be a young man. I guessed that, probably, they had never read the minutes themselves.

And so, I said that I had somebody and I would accept their offer. I went back to Washington, and I selected the member of my staff who had been a practicing attorney in Washington. She was on my staff to ensure I did not break any Congressional procedures or rules. In addition to that, she was unsympathetic to the purpose of the investigation. She was a level-headed and very reasonably brilliant, capable lady, and her attitude toward the investigation was this: “What could possibly be wrong with foundations? They do so much good.”

Well, in the face of that sincere conviction of Kathryn’s, I went out of my way not to prejudice her in any way, but I did explain to her that she couldn’t possibly cover fifty years of handwritten minutes in two weeks. So, she would have to do what we call “spot reading.” I blocked out certain periods of time to concentrate on. Off she went — to New York. She came back at the end of two weeks, with the following recorded on dictaphone belts.

We are now at the year nineteen hundred and eight, which was the year that the Carnegie Foundation began operations. And, in that year, the trustees meeting, for the first time, raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year, in a very learned fashion. And the question is this: Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people? And they conclude that, no more effective means to that end is known to humanity, than war. So then, in 1909, they raise the second question, and discuss it, namely, how do we involve the United States in a war?

Well, I doubt, at that time, if there was any subject more removed from the thinking of most of the People of this country, than its involvement in a war. There were intermittent shows in the Balkans, but I doubt very much if many people even knew where the Balkans were. And finally, they answer that question as follows: we must control the State Department.

And then, that very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? They answer it by saying, we must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country and, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective. Then, time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I. At that time, they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatch to President Wilson a telegram cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly. And finally, of course, the war is over.

At that time, their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914, when World War I broke out. At that point, they come to the conclusion that, to prevent a reversion, we must control education in the United States. And they realize that is a pretty big task. To them it is too big for them alone.

So they approach the Rockefeller Foundation with a suggestion: that portion of education which could be considered domestic should be handled by the Rockefeller Foundation, and that portion which is international should be handled by the Endowment.